...But after studying the so called Normative Mass it was clear to me that few of them can have been parish priests. I cannot think that anyone with pastoral experience would have regarded the sung Mass as being of first importance.

At home it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men who come regularly to Mass. If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel (a demonstration of the Normative Mass) we would soon he left with a congregation mostly of women and children...

Now, even the children are done with this stuff and the old gals go out of habit but clearly do not believe in the real presence

What the freak?! Some table in the aisle nowhere near the altar, and this goony table service... Evangelicals have been "serving" communion like this for years, but worse - just on a table with little or no prayer of any sort, let alone the former standard of repeating the words handed down from St Paul. Go on up there when you feel like it folks, Jesus is waiting for you.